Managing Legal
The Point Where corporate Legal needs the services of a specialist, it should look primarily among law firm partners for the practitioner who has spent years — more typically decades — focused on the narrow legal area in which the company’s need arises (more on this here and here). Surprisingly, attorneys employed by such firms […]
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Many Business Lawyers Have Excellent Schooling — But Early Hands-On Training is Often Hit-and-Miss (Part II of III)
One practical consequence of the big gap between attorneys’ excellent formal schooling and the skills they need to do excellent work for clients: Attorneys who graduated from law school 4 years ago or less typically lack the skills they need to serve the client independently — i.e., without “supervision”. … Leading law practice consultant Jordan […]
Many Business Lawyers Have Excellent Schooling — But Early Hands-On Training is Often Hit-and-Miss (Part I of III)
There’s not much in the way of practical how-to instruction for new attorneys. So there’s a big gap between their excellent formal schooling and the skills needed to do excellent work for clients. This gap poses two practical consequences: Attorneys who graduated from law school less than 4 years ago typically lack the skills they […]
Treat Contracting as Business Process Management: Cut Order-to-Cash Cycle, Remove Operational Bottlenecks
The Point Why approach the contracting function as a form of business process management? Two reasons. First, efficient contracting drives — and ad hoc contracting impedes — cash flow. By making the order-to-cash cycle fast or slow. Second, efficient contracting enables quick action — and ad hoc contracting creates roadblocks — in any operation where […]
Scaling the Capacity of Your Corporate Legal Function Requires Multiple Disciplines — Not Just More Lawyers
The Point “Corporate Legal”. For decades this phrase has referred to people who have been formally trained and experienced in only one discipline: law. And these people have had just one function: advice and representation on how statutes and regulations — and the courts and government agencies that apply them — could constrain a company’s […]
‘Tis the Season for Law Firm Rate Increases: Respond Emotionally? Tactically? Or Strategically?
The Point From a November 28 report in American Lawyer Media / Law.com (subscription required): “‘Surprised, Angry, Dismayed’: Legal Departments Vow to Fight Law Firms’ Rate-Hike Plans … The in-house legal community is expressing outrage that law firms will be pressing for aggressive rate hikes in 2023, even though they know that legal departments are […]
An Effective Corporate Law Function Uses the Right Tool for the Specific Task — Not Just In-House Counsel and Law Firms
The Point There’s a lot more to the corporate law function than what lawyers do. But most of the legal profession doesn’t recognize that, and client companies suffer the resulting costs of Legal’s labor-intensive, technology-averse work methods.
The Legal Industry Should Learn from the Medical Field about How they Access Skilled Professionals Who Are Not MDs
The Point Too often the legal profession uses its power to regulate the competence of its service providers (a good goal) simply to protect lawyers from unwanted competition (a bad goal). Medical authorities have developed care specialties performed by professionals outside the category of licensed physician, who are highly trained — and who do their […]
Physicians Are Trained Formally and Carefully in Practical Skills; Lawyers Are Not — Part II of II: The Way it Could Be
The Point As I wrote in my previous post, the U.S. legal profession confines its formal training to a theoretical knowledge of law (J.D. from a law school) and an academic test of memorization (the bar exam). Licensed attorneys’ grounding in practical skills consists almost entirely of unsystematic, on-the-job improvisation. Ad hoc “qualification” whose adequacy […]